


Open Wounds

by bigskydreamin



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Family Relationships - Freeform, Gen, Season 2 fix it fic, frank discussions of abuse and trauma, mothers and sons, summer after season 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-11
Updated: 2017-01-11
Packaged: 2018-09-16 22:33:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9292319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bigskydreamin/pseuds/bigskydreamin
Summary: The summer after Season Two, Melissa's not content to let Scott's various traumas go unaddressed.





	

Nobody knew better than her son that Melissa McCall wasn’t above fighting dirty to get her way. Yet every time it happened, nobody was more surprised than Scott.

He was aware enough to be suspicious when she tossed him the car keys one Saturday morning, two weeks into summer vacation. Keen werewolf senses also helped pick out the uneven tremor of her heartbeat as she smiled and said:

“C’mon. We’re taking a family day in the city.”

“In the city?”

“Yup. Let’s move it, don’t wanna sit all day in traffic.”

Scott eyed her skeptically. The last time they’d gone to San Francisco together had been a year ago. When he’d still been human. The sharp pang that came with that reminder had him disinclined to do anything but curl up in bed all day, but that option fled out the door with his mother on her way to the car. Dutiful son would always top werewolf in his list of identity traits, so with a sigh that sounded more like a canine whine than he liked, he rose from the kitchen table, dropped his cereal bowl in the sink and followed her down the driveway.

“You’re driving,” she said, sliding into the passenger seat.

Scott fiddled with the keys before slipping them into the ignition. Clenching his jaw, he contemplated possible escape routes. Anything that might get him out of an hour long drive trapped in the car with the cloying scent of unease rolling off his mother in waves. But where would he go? Allison was out of the question. Even if they hadn’t broken up, comforting her in her grief for the woman who’d just tried to murder him required a level of emotional gymnastics Scott wasn’t sure he was skilled enough to pull off. Stiles? Pretty sure he was still sporting that shiner that Scott knew had something to do with Gerard no matter what Stiles claimed, which meant spending the day staring at it and wondering what was so bad his best friend wouldn’t even tell him how he got it. Isaac seemed more and more friendly these days, but seeking him out would probably involve crossing paths with Derek, which didn’t need to happen for like…at least a couple more months yet. Who did that leave? Jackson?

God, his life was depressing. Was he seriously considering Jackson as a viable alternative to spending the day with his mom? He needed more friends.

“Why are you so nervous?” He asked as he pulled away from the curb.

“I’m not nervous,” his mother said. Scott rolled his eyes.

“I can literally smell you being nervous, mom.”

“Oh. Right. That’s going to get old really fast, just telling you now.”

“You’re avoiding the question.”

His mother beamed and reached over to pat him on the cheek. The small car didn’t leave Scott much room to recoil in mortification.

“I just can’t sneak anything past you.”

“You’re still avoiding the question!”

“And he’s onto me again!”

Scott bit back the petulant complaint that tried to trip out his lips. Then he bit back the growl that rose to replace it. Too little, too late. She froze, just for a second, but still long enough for both of them to be painfully aware of the slight shaking of her hand as she pulled it back and tucked it under her chin, turning to stare out the passenger side window.

Day Twenty Two since the Great Werewolf Outing debacle of sophomore year. Status: Everything still sucks.

“Can you at least tell me where we’re going?”

“I’ll give you directions when we get closer,” she said, eyes still glued out the window. Scott sighed.

“I’m sorry.”

His mother glanced over just long enough to offer him a watery smile.

“It’s okay.”

No. It wasn’t.

The trip passed in uncomfortable silence, his mother reanimating as they approached the city limits, offering terse directions to a quiet neighborhood not far from the BART. Scott frowned as they parked on a small side street. It was still early yet, the last vestiges of fog from the Bay still faintly shrouding the pavement. There was little to no foot traffic in their immediate vicinity. The row of plain looking two and three story buildings flanking the street were still and silent, save for a small trickle of activity through the front door of one building on the far corner. His mother set off towards it with purpose. Scott trailed reluctantly.

His ears pricked as they stepped inside. The noise of a dozen individuals milling around a table of coffee pots and stale donuts took shape as actual conversations. Curiosity got the best of him and he listened in on a couple, trying to glean some context for where they were. It took a minute or two, but the wariness weighing down his gut gradually intensified before finally spiking sharply.

“Mom. What is this place?”

The nerves he’d been scenting all morning crystallized into something pungent, laced through with guilt. She met his gaze squarely though.

“It’s a support group. For…trauma survivors.”

“What?” His horrified outburst came out louder than he intended, and all conversation stopped for a moment, a dozen pair of eyes shifting their way. Scott grabbed his mother by the arm and dragged her over by the door. She didn’t stop him. “We can’t go in there!”

“We can and we are, Scott.”

Speechless, he wracked his brain for clues, anything he might have said to her that would make her think this was…what? Necessary? A good idea? Had anything to do with him?

“Mom, I don’t know what exactly you think happened with Peter, but it wasn’t…he didn’t do that!”

“I know that. But it’s not like I can send you to a therapist to talk about what really happened, is it? This is an open, public group. Anyone can come for any reason, they only ask that we be respectful of whoever is sharing. I know nobody’s going to have insight into what you’ve been through, I know that you can’t be completely open about what really happened, but its the best I can come up with,” his mother whispered in a rising crescendo. “God, Scott, I certainly don’t know how to understand what it is you’re dealing with, and its not like you’ll talk to me so if you can find even a little understanding for it here, can’t you at least try? You asked me what you could do to help me come to terms with all this. This is it, this is what I want. I know its not ideal, but its the best I’ve got!”

“Mom,” Scott tried to interrupt, to no effect. He placed his hands on her shoulders as she finally barreled to a stop. “Mom, please! Okay, its alright, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to…its fine okay?”

She shook her head in frustration. “No honey, I’m sorry. I’m not trying to guilt you here, that’s the opposite of what I want, I just…”

She trailed off, defeated. He knew the feeling well. Knew the look too, thanks to plenty of self-scrutiny in the mirror. Maybe he’d inherited it from her. He sure as hell hadn’t gotten it from his dad.

“Take the win, Melissa,” was all she said, pinching the bridge of her nose. It was vocalized softly enough Scott didn’t think she meant him to hear it, and now probably wasn’t the time to remind her about werewolf hearing, too. His mom shook her head again and walked off towards a pair of open seats as the rest of the crowd settled in for their meeting. He trudged after, slouched down, kept his eyes on the floor. Tried his best to pass the next hour tuning out the voices and their litany of horror stories, things he shouldn’t be listening to, confessions he had no right to be privy to. He wasn’t like them, his fucked up life was nothing like what they were describing. He shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t be listening to all this.

But, well.

Fucking werewolf senses.

They were silent on the way home. His mom drove. He stared out the window. The worried glances she darted over at him every thirty seconds were plainly reflected in the glass. The second they pulled into their driveway he was out the door and up in his room. She didn’t follow.

Scott’s determined ‘ignore, distract and avoid’ approach bore fruit for the rest of the week, as he refused to acknowledge their trip or anything that had happened on it. There were a couple of times when it seemed like his mom was about to raise the subject, but he made his excuses and slipped out the door. Her double shifts took care of the rest. All was well until the following Saturday, when she met him at the kitchen table, dropping her keys next to his bowl of cereal.

“Mom, I don’t want to go back there.”

She sat down across from him. “I don’t know how else to help you with this.”

“I don’t NEED you to help me with this. I’m fine!”

“How can you be, Scott? How can you possibly be fine when I know you’ve still only told me the slightest fraction of what’s happened but what I do know can not possibly result in you being fine unless you’re some kind of robot? And I carried you in my goddamn womb for nine months Scott, I think I of all people would know if my son was a robot, and you’re not a fucking robot. You’re not fine, baby. And that’s okay but it means I need to help you. It means you need to let me help you.”

He shook his head miserably. She wasn’t wrong in what she was saying, but that didn’t mean she was right, either. Did it? Fuck, why couldn’t they just stop talking about this, he wasn’t fine now, but he was fine when they weren’t constantly picking at it like a scab, couldn’t she see that?

“I’m not like them,” he tried again. “I don’t belong there, I’m not…the stuff they talk about, its not, I don’t…I’m not like them.”

“Like what? There’s no…they aren’t a them, sweetheart. They’re just people that things happened to. Like you.”

“Whatever,” he growled, snatching up the keys without another word between them the entire way there.

Their weekly expeditions became a sort of a routine. An awkward, uncomfortable routine, but a routine nonetheless. They drove there in silence, Scott kept his head down throughout the meeting and avoided small talk with anyone else, despite being unable to avoid familiarizing themselves with their names, matching faces to stories whether he liked it or not. Still, he adjusted, he found a way to work it into his new definition of normal - at least until after one Saturday morning’s meeting, he couldn’t help but overhear one of the other women talking to his mom off in one corner. About how great it was that her son came with her each week to support her. Scott stared at the wall, speechless.

They were halfway home before he lost his self-waged battle against acknowledging the meetings or anything that happened in them.

“Do they all think we’re there because of…because something happened to you?”

He kept his gaze firmly fixed out the passenger side window, but by this point he’d become adept at using the glass as a mirror. He watched his mom trade her glances between him and the road, looking for the right response.

“I don’t know, to tell you the truth. I wouldn’t be surprised if most of them did.”

“But…its not true. That’s not why we go. You’re not…”

“No, honey, nothing like that has ever happened to me. Even when things were at their worst with your dad, he never raised a hand against me, there’s no deep dark secret I’m hiding about myself, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

He exhaled a breath he hadn’t been aware he’d been holding, his shoulders loosening ever so slightly. She wasn’t done though.

“Perceptions are what they are though. People see a woman and her almost grown teenage son, they’re just…they’re going to assume what they’re going to assume. This fits into their preconceptions easier, so its just what they think of first.”

“And you’re okay with that? That they all think…”

His mom shrugged. “What if it were true? What if I’d answered you differently? Would that change anything between us? Would you think differently of me?”

“What? God, no! Of course not!”

She looked over at him again, long enough this time that he finally tore his gaze away from the window and turned to look back at her.

“So why is it different when its you? Do you really think anyone there would think less of you if you did share something?”

Scott dropped his eyes to his hands. Which were clenched, claws starting to peek out and press against his palms, slight trickles of blood leaking out through his fists.

“What would I even say?”

Silence reigned for a couple of minutes. Finally she shrugged. There was a forced casualness to her tone when she answered. Her voice stayed mostly steady though.

“That’s up to you, honey. Pick something. You could talk about when that boy…shot you. Or, if you want to, you could talk about what you felt when that man…when Peter attacked you. Or when he stalked you and harassed you and threatened you and…”

She broke off in mid sentence. Her knuckles were white around the steering wheel and her shoulders were shaking ever so slightly. Scott made to rest his hand on the shoulder closest to him, to steady her. He stopped himself in time. There was still blood on his palms, and that was her favorite sweater.

“The point is, its about you, Scott. Say whatever you want to say, whatever you feel you need to say. Everyone else is just there to listen.”

He nodded and let a peaceful quiet - or at least an uneventful one - overtake them once more.

Three more meetings passed without incident or deviation from his new awkward, uncomfortable Saturday morning routine. They were nearing the end of July when Scott finally spoke. It wasn’t something he had planned on; he had nothing prepared. There was just a stillness in the room, a lull between other members of the group sharing, and it was almost like he tripped and fell into the space between words. One moment he was just sitting there, staring at the floor like usual, grateful for the silence. The next, words were filling it, and he was several sentences in before he even realized the voice that was speaking was his own.

“Last year, there was…there was this man, who…he hurt me, I guess you could say? Not like…he just. He hurt me, is all. But after that. After that, he kept. He kept trying to get me to do things, things he wanted, and like. Sometimes he tried to make it sound like it would be a good thing for me if I did them, and other times he threatened me, or threatened the people I care about. Like my girlfriend, and my best friend. And my mom.”

His mom reached over and slid her hand on top of his. The restless shaking in his left leg subsided. He hadn’t even noticed it start.

“And it was scary, yeah, but that wasn’t. Like. The worst part was how confident he was, you know? Smug. That even though he was trying to get me to do things I’d never in a million years want to do, he was always talking and acting like it was inevitable, that eventually I’d see things his way or I’d just end up doing what he wanted whether I liked it or not. It wasn’t even a question, he just took it for granted, and…no. The worst thing was he was right. He was so convinced that he could like…make me into whatever he wanted, and no matter how I felt about it later or when he wasn’t around, when he was it was just like…I knew why he was so smug because there was no way I could ever beat him, no way I could ever win, and it just.”

“He made me a different person,” Scott finished. He released a frustrated sigh. Not able to articulate it any better. “Any time I was around him, I was a different person. I was a weaker person. Any time I think about him, I’m a weaker person. And I thought he was gone, you know? Like, for good. But now he’s not gone anymore and even though I thought I’d changed since he was last here, I thought I was stronger its like, nothing’s changed at all. He’s still so smug and he’s still not…wrong.”

Now it was silent again. He risked raising his eyes. Everyone was looking at him, like he’d figured. It wasn’t…it was okay though. Kinda. He guessed.

“Thank you for sharing, Scott,” someone said. Various murmurs agreed. He nodded his head awkwardly, and that was that.

“I’m proud of you,” his mom said forty minutes into their drive home. They were nearing the Beacon Hills county line. No one but them on the stretch of highway laid down between twin walls of forest trees on either side of the road. He swallowed.

“Did…did you hear me?” She pressed. He swallowed again, but this time the bile kept rising in his throat.

“Stop the car.”

“What?”

“Stop the car! Please!”

She pulled over onto the shoulder of the highway and Scott stumbled out the door, fell to his hands and knees on the rough dirt, dry heaving. His body shook and trembled all over.

“Scott, sweetheart, talk to me,” he heard his mother shouting, distantly. No, she wasn’t shouting, she was a nurse, she knew better, she was saying calming, soothing things, he could hear her, hear her professionalism but it cracked, there were chinks in her armor and god nobody knew about chinks in their armor better than him, that was the whole problem that was the whole fucking problem the problem was

“He was in my head, mom,” he sobbed. “Over and over again, and I couldn’t keep him out because I’m not a human anymore, I’m not a person, I’m a werewolf and he was my alpha and that meant he could just get in my head whenever he wanted and there was nothing I could do to keep him out! I couldn’t even dream without him being in there, I had his dreams of killing people and LIKING it and I didn’t even know it wasn’t my dream, I couldn’t even tell that he was in there with me at first. He could just get in my head and make me dream what he wanted and he tried to make me shift and kill my friends and he just shoved whatever he wanted in there like his own memories and now I’m afraid of fire and I never used to be! I can’t even remember what stuff I used to be afraid of, sometimes I’ll have a random thought about a niece or nephew I don’t even have because its not my fears its not my memories, its all just crap he put in there and there’s nothing I can do about it. THAT’S the worst part, my mind isn’t even mine anymore, any alpha could just make think things and dream things and do things and its like what I want doesn’t even matter!”

He choked on his own snot, vaguely noting her kneeling beside him, careful not to touch but he honestly couldn’t even remember if that was a nurse thing or because part of her was afraid he was going to lose it and start lashing out with his claws and maybe hurt her and oh god, what if he did?

“And Derek kept trying to make me join his pack but I can’t trust him, he lied to me and used me and we never agree on the right thing to do and if I let him be my alpha what would stop him from just making me shut up or making me do what he wanted or putting something in one of my dreams or something and I wouldn’t even know it wasn’t my own idea! And I don’t want to be a lone wolf, I don’t want to be alone, I don’t want to be like…like Mrs. Argent said and like Gerard said and everyone knows omegas don’t last on their own. I want a pack, but how can I have an alpha if I can’t ever stop them from doing what Peter did?”

“Why can’t you be an alpha then? You could still have a pack, without anybody having that power over you.”

Scott laughed like broken glass, a harsh, jagged sound he didn’t even know he had in him. Once upon a time he never could have made a sound like that and yet here it was, right on the tip of his tongue waiting to be let loose.

“That’s the whole problem, that’s not how it works, mom. You can only be an alpha if you like, inherit it from your alpha or if you kill another one, those are the rules and I can’t do that! I thought I could kill Peter, but even if Derek had let me I don’t know if I really could have, because its like they’re all right then! I’d be a murderer then, I’d be everything Peter tried to make me, everything that Derek and Chris Argent and everyone else is all convinced I’ll become anyway and how is that any better? I just want to be me, I don’t want to be a killer, but if I kill someone to become an alpha Peter still wins, they all still win, it won’t even matter because it’ll just mean they already made me a monster anyway. I’m stuck,” he all but howled, his claws digging into the ground, the dirt, the rock, but he barely felt it. “I don’t want to be an omega but I can’t be an alpha and I can’t be a beta and I don’t know what to do.”

“So change the rules.”

He stopped, startled out of his own head by the sheer unexpectedness of that response. Scott blinked, clearing his eyes, reining his racing heartbeat back into its corral.

“What?”

“Easier said than done, believe me I know, sweetheart,” his mom said. She reached out with a hand and tilted his chin to face her. “But sometimes that’s all we have. When the world doesn’t work the way it is, we just have to find a way to change it.”

“Just like that, huh?” He barked out a laugh, his heightened emotions trying to strangle it in his throat before it could fight free. She smiled and pursed her lips.

“No just like that about it. But I told you. I know my son, the son I carried, the son I raised. And if anyone can change the rules, if anyone has it in them to say this doesn’t work, this isn’t right, and I won’t accept it? It’s my son.”

“You can’t know that,” he whispered.

“Bullshit,” she said firmly. “It’s called mother’s intuition. It’s a thing. Look it up.”

“I don’t even know how to do that. What does that even mean? Where do I start?”

“You don’t have to have all the answers right now. You just have to promise me you’ll look for them. That you won’t give up looking for them just because some assholes tell you that’s not the way the world works. Can you promise me that?”

He hesitated.

“That thing you told me someone said to you. That now that you have power, you should use it to help other people? Not everyone thinks like that. It’s not a given. It’s not something to take for granted, because not everyone agrees. And I’m so proud of you for being someone who does. I’m so proud that you want to use your power to help people. But I need to know you understand that just because you do that…it doesn’t mean you can’t also use your power, your strength, to help yourself when you need it.”

“Okay,” Scott said. He cleared his throat, tried it again. A little louder this time. He bobbed his head up and down. “Okay.”

“That’s my son,” his mother said, and she stood and dusted off her pants, reaching down with a hand to help him to his feet. “And its okay to not be fine, right now. It’s okay if you’re still not fine tomorrow, or next week, or the week after. Because you will be someday. It’s all about playing the long game, and I’m telling you that someday? You’re going to be just fine, sweetheart.”

“You sound so sure.”

“Mother’s intuition,” she said briskly. “I told you. Look it up. Now, I’m feeling like this calls for a mother son bonding afternoon at the movies, your pick, but anything with a gratuitous fireball on the poster is getting vetoed. C’mon, let’s move it.”

They ended up watching some ridiculously sappy family drama. They both cried.

It was okay though. He’d had worse Saturdays.


End file.
